Exploring Uruguay Blog

Dealing with Culture Shock

When you move to a foreign country as an expat, there’s one thing you can expect to experience… culture shock. No matter how prepared you are for the move, it will hit you at some point.

Linda, a friend of ours who writes the Uruguay My Way blog, wrote a really great description of the five stages of culture shock. I wasn’t even aware that there are stages to culture shock.

The five stages are:

• Honeymoon
• Cultural Shock
• Initial Adjustment
• Mental Isolation
• Acceptance & Integration

Similar to Linda’s experience, I think we have also flip-flopped all over the place without having quite gotten to Acceptance & Integration yet.

After this initial post, she’ll be writing five more blog posts about each of the five stages of culture shock. Make sure to keep up with this series on her blog if you’re interested in learning more about the culture shock that expats experience.

Biodegradable Shopping Bags

We typically bring our hemp shopping bags with us to the grocery store with us so plastic bags don’t overrun our kitchen. But, we do use plastic grocery bags as trash sacks so we like to have a small supply on hand.

One thing we noticed the first time that we shopped at the Disco was that the shopping bags are labeled as being biodegradable. So are the plastic bags at Devoto (one of the other major grocery store chains in Uruguay).

We had never seen that in the States before, so we were interested by it. We checked out the website listed on the bags. Apparently this company makes an additive that makes conventional plastic products biodegradable.

Small amounts of the additive are combined with the plastic during the manufacturing process to allow plastic products such as polyethylene carrier bags to biodegrade in 24-36 months.
 
We thought it was very cool that a small country like Uruguay is using biodegradable plastic bags, when the major chains in the US still aren’t (as far as we know).

Public Schools in Uruguay

There have been several people that have contacted us or posted questions on our Forum about the school system in Uruguay.

Since our girls are still too young for school, we’re definitely not experts on the school system in Uruguay.

However, we came across this article in Ola Uruguay titled, “Public Schools in Uruguay—A Quick Guide,” that you may be interested in if you’re considering a move to Uruguay with school aged children.

The article gives a good, high-level overview of the public school system in Uruguay.

You may also want to check out this thread on our forum for some other good information about Uruguay’s school system.

Do you have school age children in Uruguay? What has your experience with the school system been?

Recipe of the Week: Pigs in a Blanket (Stuffed Cabbage)

I used to eat these a lot growing up and forgot about them until we had a large head of cabbage that needed to be used.

When I suggested making Pigs in a Blanket, Brian thought I meant the hotdog version so he was confused (since I don’t eat hot dogs).

It is a bit of a process to make this recipe, but they’re good and the recipe makes a lot, so it’s great for a meal where you want to have leftovers.


Ingredients:

• 1 ½ kilos (3 pounds) extra lean ground beef
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
• ½ teaspoon, salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 2 cups white rice, cooked and cooled
• 1 large cabbage
• 5-6 large tomatoes, peeled and crushed
• 4 cups homemade chicken broth
• Olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 160° C (325° F)
2. Coat large roasting pan with olive oil and set aside
3. Wilt head of cabbage in large pot of boiling water for 5 minutes
4. Remove cabbage from pot, cool slightly and separate leaves, taking care not to break the leaves
5. Mix ground beef, cooked rice, garlic, salt, paprika, cumin, oregano and pepper.
6. Form 3-inch balls
7. Place meatball into cabbage leaf and fold leaf around the ball.
8. Place into roasting pan, folded side down
9. Repeat until all filling is used
10. Cover cabbage rolls with crushed tomatoes
11. Pour chicken broth over the rolls
12. Cover roasting pan and bake for 2 hours or until cabbage is tender

Tips and Modifications:

1. Top with hot sauce and/or cheese
2. You can omit the cumin and replace with a teaspoon of basil and ½ teaspoon of rosemary for an Italian flavor; top with cheese and/or ketchup.

Video: Kaylee's Debut

As promised, here is a video of Kaylee, not just a video... It's her first of many:

If you want to watch another video right now of Zoë meeting Kaylee... Check out Chrystal's Happy Mothering Blog.

We'll be doing weekly "Two Under Two" updates there, so you can follow the girls through videos, pictures and stories.

We'll still have our family adventures in Uruguay here as always...

BTW... Yesterday many of you guessed and a lot of you were correct... But a lot of you weren't.

For those of you who guessed that Kaylee was on the right and Zoë was on the left... You were WRONG...

Kaylee is on the left and Zoë is on the Right.

Which One is Zoë and Which One is Kaylee?

One of these babies is Zoë and the other is Kaylee.

Can you tell them apart?

Left is ?
Right is ?

We'll give you the answer along with some video tomorrow... In the meantime, take a guess...

Kaylee Joy Johnson is Here

Hey Everyone...

Kaylee was born yesterday morning (2/14/10) at 1:10am... We have a Valentine's day baby.

Chrystal and Kaylee are still in the hospital, we thought they were coming home today, but tomorrow is what it's going to be. 

We'll be getting some video up of Kaylee, Zoë and both of them meeting for the first time in the next day or so...

In the meantime, here's a picture of Kaylee:

Here's a picture of my beautiful wife and Kaylee:

Have a great day!!!

Recipe of the Week: Quick n’ Easy Honey Mustard Wings

This recipe comes from Brian’s bachelor days. I have never been big on using a microwave, so I was skeptical when Brian suggested cooking chicken wings using it. However, they turned out really good.

If you need to whip up a quick appetizer and don’t have time to use the oven (or just don’t want to use the oven in this heat!), give this recipe a try.

Ingredients:

• ½ kilo (1 pound) chicken wings (cut at the joints)
• 1 cup yellow mustard
• 1 cup honey

Directions:

1. Mix yellow mustard and honey until well combined
2. Coat the chicken wings and place on a microwave safe plate
3. Place plate in microwave
4. Cook on high for 10 minutes, or until fully cooked
5. Stop, flip and rotate the chicken every 2 minutes
6. Serve

Tips:

1. You make these honey mustard wings in the oven; set the oven to 200° C (400° F) for 20-25 minutes. Be sure to flip and rotate the wings at 10 minutes.

We Almost Got Mugged About an Hour Ago

Pocitos is a nice area of Montevideo. When you hear about how safe Montevideo is as a whole, the one place you're always warned about is Ciudad Vieja...  Never Pocitos... I've known a few people to have bad experiences in Ciudad Vieja, thankfully we've never had a problem there. We've never had a problem anywhere other than here in Pocitos...

We had been here for 2 weeks, I was getting money late at night and a couple of guys who were watching me tried to circle me... I'm sure their intentions were less than honorable... I pulled out my blade told them I'd kill them, they took off...

One night I was coming home late from my favorite little bar down the street... Some guy came up, got in my personal space and grabbed me requesting cash... and I hit him until he stopped moving.

Both of these incidents happened late at night while I was by myself.

We just got back from the Wednesday Feria here in Pocitos... We live in what I feel is a safe and nice area... And most people would agree...

Chrystal is due to have Kaylee anytime now so she wanted to walk down with me. I threw Zoe in our Kelty Carrier and off we go... Again, we live in a nice area and it's the middle of the day; it's beautiful out today...

So in this part of South America there's a drug called Pasta Base (pronounced: pasta ba-say)... It's a derivative of cocaine and makes crack look like candy and meth look like a picnic... It's highly addictive and from what we've been told, when someone gets on it they're completely gone in 6 months... We see them on the streets, we call them base heads... I don't know their official terms, but they're whacked out of their minds...

We just had one try to mug us on the way to the feria with his bare hands.  Zoe's Kelty is weighed down with an extra 20 lbs of crap for when she goes off to stay with friends when Kaylee gets here... She wanted to ride in it... The Kelty is a ton better than pushing her through a stroller in crowds and such...

So this dude comes from the other side of the street and walks up to me asking for money... I firmly say "no" and we continue to walk... Then he decided to invade my personal space and put his hands asking me demanding "dinero blah blah blah, dinero ahora blah blah blah, dinero blah blah blah dinero..."

I'm not talking about putting a hand on my shoulder begging for money... I'm talking about him coming up on my and trying to go for my pockets...

I shoved the guy hard across the sidewalk and told Chrystal to take Zoe... She started to then stopped... The guy caught himself from hitting the ground and took a few steps back, so Chrystal thought he was walking away and didn't take her... The guy started to come back towards me...

Thank god I was in the Marines and we learned how to maneuver and fight with a 60lb pack on our backs... So I squared up to the guy and was ready to defend my family, I intended to kill him... My daughter was on my back, my pregnant wife was with me... I wasn't going to screw around.

I'm not sure how I looked, but it was enough to put some fear in that guy's eyes... and he started to back up yelling at us (I'm sure it had something to do with my mom, goats and apples... I couldn't make out most of the rest of the words...)

We proceeded to back away from him and separate ourselves... And I got Zoe ready to toss of my back if he were to try to come back (I have my little girl and my wife there, I don't want to be in this situation...)

Behind us a construction worker (probably in his 50s, but stacked) was stopped on the corner, had set his toolbox down and had his hardhat in his hand... When we got closer to him he stared venting about pasta base and the crazy kids and such and told us he was ready to come hit him with his hard hat... ;-)

I hope this serves as a lesson to Expats here and people all over. It doesn't matter how nice of a neighborhood you live in... Bad people don't stop at neighborhood boundaries...

From what we've seen and heard, these base heads usually don't carry a weapon... they just try to mug you with their fists and intimidation. One thing I will suggest is to give a hard shove and get up in the person's face, prepare to be violent... or run.

The Couples Retreat Controversy

Have you seen Couples Retreat yet? It’s really a pretty funny movie – we watched it on Graboid a while back.

When we watched it, we weren’t aware of the big controversy surrounding the movie poster that was used to promote Couples Retreat in the UK. For whatever reason, the studio decided it was a good idea to alter the original movie poster, seen here:

The black couple was removed from the poster used in the UK. It caused quite a stir and cries of racism in the media. It was all over the Internet – you can check out the article on Yahoo Movies, the Huffington Post and Mail Online if you want to read more about it.

In these articles, you’ll see this quote from the studio:
“The studio said it regretted causing offense and has abandoned plans to use the revised poster in other countries...”

Hmm… that’s interesting because we were just at Montevideo Shopping last week and this is the poster we saw at the movie theater for Couples Retreat:

I don’t think the studio was being exactly forthright with the public about their plans to use the revised poster in other countries…

What do you think about this controversy? Does it affect your interest in seeing Couples Retreat?